A Visit To The Valley

Chris Adams has a wonderful layout that prototypically recreates the Valley branch of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. This branch follows the west side of the Connecticut River Valley northward from a junction with the New Haven Shoreline at Old Saybrook Connecticut to a second junction with the New Haven Air Line at Middletown Connecticut then continuing onto Wethersfield and E. Berlin Connecticut. Several locations between Old Saybrook and Wethersfield/E.Berlin are prototypically modeled. The well thought out layout design allows accurate prototype operation.

Open House at the Valley

Chris graciously hosted a layout open house on the Friday evening before the New Haven Railroad Historical & Technical Association Reunion that was held at the The Valley Railroad in Essex Connecticut on October 22nd.
I had hoped to visit Chris's layout for some time now and it was our good fortune to be in the area for a family function, so my wife and I took some time out and visited The Valley. We had a wonderful time, Chris gave us at walking tour of the Valley branch and his work shop, we then had the opportunity to chat with some old friends and meet some new.

As one enters the layout rooms the first scene encountered is the nearing completion Old Saybrook diorama seen below. The Old Saybrook diorama is cleverly a layout within a layout, staged shoreline trains can run from staging continuously in a loop first westbound then returning eastbound. Trains from staging for the larger Valley branch portion of the layout take to the wye here at the interlocking for the northbound run to destinations along the branch. 

This scene features the Old Saybrook station, freight house, signal station 102 interlocking tower and small business structures. All these prototypically accurate structures were expertly scratch built by Valley crew member Bill Schneider, the station and tower both have detailed and lighted interiors too!

This photo from the opposite direction also shows one leg of the wye and Chris's finely detailed RS-2, blog posts on the RS-2's construction can be seen here. I will soon use the details and methods outlined by Chris to upgrade my RS-2's.

Thank you Chris,we had a great time visiting the Valley branch! Hope to return for an operating session sometime.